Depressed, Anxious, or At Peace

I shared this quote the other day: If you are depressed, you are living the past If you are anxious, you are living in the future If you are at peace, you are living in the present I’ve thought a lot about this and I can say I have experienced all three this week. I talked about my past with someone and it made me so depressed. All of the feelings that I had so long ago came rushing to the surface again. All of us have had things in our past that have depressed us. It’s amazing to me that some things that happened so long ago can suddenly feel like they’re happening again. It takes a little while to actually get over those depressed feelings again. I won’t go into what depressed me, but it did. I also experienced being anxious. I couldn’t even sleep because I was anxious. It is the unknown that makes us anxious. That can involve many things and situations. Mine was entirely unfounded. I should never have been anxious at all. It is amazing how after a few minutes all of the feelings of being anxious or nervous immediately go away. The things we worry about usually do not come true. I worry about if somebody will like me or not, if I say the right thing, do the right thing—but as I tell my friends, I can be professional for about five minutes and then Diane kicks in. I’ve decided that’s a good thing, because I am who I am and I can’t pretend to be any different. Now tonight, I am at complete peace. I’m not depressed because I’m not reliving memories of my past. I’m not anxious, because I overcame that today. I should never have questioned anything about what might have happened today. I’m at peace with my past, my future, and today. I know who is in control of my future and I know that everything is going to turn out the way it’s supposed to. I’m a “fixer” and I learned a long time ago, I’m not very good at it. If I just turn loose, things have a way of taking care of themselves. Well, actually when I turn everything over to God, He has a way of taking care of everything. The thing about that is I seem to want to help Him. You know, give Him a little guidance and a few hints along the way. I’ve learned that He has ideas of His own and they are much better than mine. All I do is tell Him and then I try to sit back and watch. It’s hard to sit back and watch sometimes—and that’s the problem. DR 2/17/13